


A Toad, can die of Light

by middlemarch



Category: Poldark (TV 2015)
Genre: F/M, Gen, Loathing, Marriage, Wisdom, sin - Freeform
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2016-10-21
Updated: 2016-10-21
Packaged: 2018-08-23 20:29:50
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 380
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/8341624
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/middlemarch/pseuds/middlemarch
Summary: They wanted each other dead, perhaps.





	

Ross loathed George Warleggan. It went beyond dislike, hatred, derision, words Demelza had a hazy sense of, not likely to be clarified without the aid of her kindly, absent tutor Verity. Demelza heard the emotion in Ross’s voice when he spoke of the other man, the way his lip curled, as if to utter his name was a mouthful of bilious sick he’d spit out. His dark eyes flashed and sparked and his broad shoulders squared, his arms flexed, perhaps wanting the bayonet His Majesty had once issued. He called him a worm, beneath notice, beneath contempt, but she noticed how fiercely, how often he returned to him, how Ross clasped her in his arms in their bed and rubbed his face in her hair, between her breasts after any encounter with the man. He loathed George, but he loved to have him as an enemy, in a way she’d never known; she fought the sea for the pilchards and then thanked the waves, railed against the dirt that Nampara drew upon herself like raiment, then emptied the slops with a light heart. Elizabeth was not her rival, a fine lady but not Ross’s wife, and not her enemy, for all she was singularly unhelpful in nearly every instance, and Prudie and Jud were the laggards she coaxed to service, but never her foes. She might have thought it was to do with her woman’s heart but for Dwight Enys, how he went among the people and wrestled with Death, but not another man; his hands never held a knife as if it would do anything but serve the meal or save a man from rot. Ross didn’t speak of the War in the Colonies but Demelza thought, _he’d liked to kill_ and the soldiers had liked him for it. She still loved him and lay with him, but she admitted it to herself, that George liked to steal and Ross to destroy and in that way, they were not so very different, though each made the other out to be a dragon, a viper, the very son of grim Leviathan from the deep. Neither of them fished the waters of the cove as she did, so they didn’t know what the sea could truly hold in its deep waters.

**Author's Note:**

> Demelza on Ross on George, on Elizabeth, on everybody. She sees a lot, Demelza and she knows what's what. If Ross took her advice half the time, he'd really reduce his brushes with death. Ross is a very flawed hero and I'm mostly a fan of the women of Poldark, which this reflect, though Aidan Turner is quite easy on the eyes...
> 
> The title (my inspiration, sorry, fans-of-George!) is from Emily Dickinson.


End file.
